Amusing.

love it.

Well, I suppose imitation is the highest form of flattery, but I have to say I hated it. I'm not sure if you realize that this poem is a contradiction in and of itself. First of all, your biggest mistake here was to assume that you were a master poetress.

You mock the amateur poet for staining beautiful subject matter with bad poetry. So if you thought my poem was beautiful, why did you go and slander it with this nauseating riffraff? I'm sorry, but I find it infuriating (not to mention ironic) That I wrote to persuade mediocre poets to keep their paws off the sacred, and lo and behold, a mediocre poet comes along and does the selfsame thing to my work. Go figure.

*grins* I'd written a poem dealing with a similar subject matter once - mine was a little more achaic though, and my conclusion a little different.

This is great, very satirical, and neat rhymes all around (save for the slightly dodgy alone/poem in stanza three). Again, I applaud your punctuation decisions, those unconventional long dashes are effective, and work nicely as a foil to the slightly old fashioned language.

I like the message of the fourth stanza. A lot of people can mercilessly mock the poor souls who write nothing but angst and dark poems about blood and break-ups, so I like that you allude to the potential they have as well. The poem has a nice tone, and I'm glad for it.

Ha! This one isn't as...clean (sorry, I can't find the right word this evening), as Snowy Suicide, but I love the topic, especially the 2nd stanza and the 1st half of the third. In the amusing handling of the topic, all Phil Ochs-like rhyming is forgiven.

i LOVE the idea around this, and you use some really great examples and such. 'Poet-In-Training' has a really nice ring to it also. made me smile all goofy-like. how nice, great message!